Readers of theşe essays will doubtless think that I have treated German scholars, and especially German archæologists, with little respect. I must admit that I have not bowed down to their authority as most people do nowadays, and as they usually expect most people to do. I think I have quite a sufficient appreciation of what Germans have done for scholarship, in the way of collecting and arranging facts. For this I am extremely grateful to them, and bow in admiration before their industry, but when it comes to drawing inferences from these facts, I prefer using my own judgment to accepting blindly the products of theirs. There is no greater or more hurtful superstition prevalent in the modern learned world than the belief in the value of the theories propounded by ordinary German savans. There is more wild guessing and absurd reasoning set down in books as profound learning by the second and third rate scholars of Germany than by all the other scholars of the world put together, and it is time that this should be recognized, in the interests of science and scientific men whose time is precious. Professor Huxley asserts that any man "who is investigating any question profoundly and thoroughly" is "compelled to read half a dozen times as many German, as English, books," and thinks he has thereby paid the Germans a great compliment. If he had added that five out of every half-dozen of the books which the student is compelled" to read, are useless, and often worse than useless, as is the fact, the compliment would " hardly have seemed so acceptable. After all, however, it must be admitted that, when every deduction is made, Germany possesses more first-class scholars, even in archæology, than any other country, and against these I have not a word to say. Though in the following essays I have had the boldness to differ with some of them, Overbeck, Michaelis, Brunn, etc., this in no way diminishes my respect for them or my sense of gratitude toward them. But for their labours, these essays could never have been written. Least of all would I wish to say one irreverent word respecting Professor Overbeck, whose scholarship and absolute unselfish loyalty to truth need no commendation of mine, and to whom I owe a debt of gratitude, which I can never repay, for his fatherly conduct toward the young man to whose memory this volume is dedicated. DOMODOSSOLA, April 22, 1882. THE SUBJECT OF THE PARTHENON FRIEZE. ANY one who puts forward an entirely new explanation of an ancient work of art, which has long occupied the attention of archæologists, virtually sets aside all previous explanations. He, therefore, lays himself under two obligations: first, to show that these explanations are so unsatisfactory, forced, and incoherent as to render a new one necessary; and, second, to offer such a substitute for them as shall leave no doubt, in the mind of any unprejudiced person, that he has found the true explanation. The test of a true explanation is, that it accounts, in a perfectly natural way, for every figure, attitude, and motive of the work in question. In the following essay the writer hopes that he has been able to fulfil these two obligations to a reasonable degree. Of all the great works of art that have come down to us from antiquity unaccompanied by any written |